Sniping at Hillary: The video 'proves' it!

A spoof video posted to YouTube (where else?) this week puts a new twist on the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s “misspoken” recollection of landing in Bosnia “under sniper fire” in 1996. The video (“Hillary Wasn’t Lying!”) adds gunfire and explosions to actual footage of Clinton’s uneventful arrival – footage that shows her shaking hands with soldiers, hugging a child, posing for photos, singing at a USO show with Cheryl Crow. The funniest bit is when Clinton points repeatedly at the track of a tank; the video’s creators put a pistol in Clinton’s hand while the narrator talks about how she displayed “a little marksmanship on a terrorist hiding under a tank.”



It’s clearly a fake, with the added effects obviously superimposed. It’s not going to fool anybody. But it does bring up a serious issue, pointed out by my colleague Bruce Holtgren: What happens when a video can be doctored to fool everybody? Will it be open season on any public figure whose enemies seek to destroy him or her? Will we see fake footage of a senator or governor in bed with a prostitute and not know it’s fake? Will we see a years-old video of a now-presidential candidate at a church service he swears he never attended?

Then envision the futility of a public figure trying to explain it away and somehow prove it’s not true, that moving pictures can and do lie. As former Labor Secretary Ray Donovan asked after being acquitted in a fraud case: “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”

Video technology is taking huge strides forward all the time. We may be nearing the point at which Hollywood could make a computer-generated, full-length feature movie that looks absolutely real but uses no live actors. Surely we’re nearing the point where a doctored video could sway public opinion.

Or maybe it’s already happened...